Chapter 19. Virtual Nics - Lenovo RackSwitch G8264 Application Manual

Chapter 19. Virtual NICs

© Copyright Lenovo 2016
A Network Interface Controller (NIC) is a component within a server that allows
the server to be connected to a network. The NIC provides the physical point of
connection, as well as internal software for encoding and decoding network
packets.
Virtualizing the NIC helps o resolve issues caused by limited NIC slot availability.
By virtualizing a 10Gbps NIC, its resources can be divided into multiple logical
instances known as virtual NICs (vNICs), Each vNIC appear as a regular,
independent NIC to the server operating system or a hypervisor, with each vNIC
using some portion of the physical NIC's overall bandwidth.
Figure 26. Virtualizing the NIC for Multiple Virtual Pipes on Each Link
Server
NIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
OS or
VNIC
Hypervisor
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
VNIC
A G8264 with Lenovo Enterprise Network Operating System 8.4 supports the
Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (VFA) to provide the following vNIC features:
 Up to four vNICs are supported on each server port.
vNICs can be grouped together, along with regular server ports, uplink ports, or

LAGs, to define vNIC groups for enforcing communication boundaries.
 In the case of a failure on the uplink ports associated with a vNIC group, the
switch can signal affected vNICs for failover while permitting other vNICs to
continue operation.
Each vNIC can be independently allocated a symmetric percentage of the

10Gbps bandwidth on the link (from NIC to switch, and from switch to NIC).
The G8264 can be used as the single point of vNIC configuration as long as the

Emulex NIC is working in Lenovo Virtual Fabric mode.
The following restrictions apply to vNICs:
 vNICs are not supported simultaneously with VM groups (see Chapter 20,
"VMready") on the same switch ports.
By default, vNICs are disabled. As described in the following sections, the
administrator must first define server ports prior to configuring and enabling
vNICs as discussed in the rest of this section.
Physical Switch
NIC Ports Ports
10 Gbps Link with
Multiple Virtual Pipes
Switch 1
Switch 2
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